In the packaging sector, it is known to obtain packages to contain products by folding flat semi-worked products made of a relatively rigid packaging material.
Among the packaging materials mainly used are cardboard, either smooth or corrugated, and plastic polymer materials such as for example polypropylene (PP) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET), but not excluding other materials with comparable characteristics of rigidity. Hereafter in the present description reference will be made to the combination of said materials using the generic term packaging materials.
It is known to make packages using plants comprising a machine for working packaging material provided with one or more operating stations configured to perform a plurality of workings, for example cutting and/or creasing, on said packaging materials.
From the application WO-A-2010/029418 in the name of the present Applicant plants are also known for making packages that also include an apparatus to feed the packaging material to the machine, which apparatus comprises a storage and feed unit, in which the packaging material to be worked is disposed, and removal and transport means to move the packaging material from the storage unit to the machine in which it is worked.
The storage and feed unit can include one or more storage sectors of the packaging material, following each other in a direction of feed of the material and configured to contain one or more pallets, possibly adjacent, of sheets, strips or reels of the packaging material, also of different sizes.
Each sector is served by corresponding removal and transport means, for the automatic feed of the packaging material to the working machine according to a feed line or more frequently, according to a plurality of overlapping feed lines.
Normally, in the plants thus made, the machine includes a loading device or selector, which receives the packaging material from the feed apparatus and conveys it toward a device to introduce the packaging material into the one or more work stations.
Though able to supply high productivity, known plants to make packages could have some limitations in terms of flexibility, in particular in the variety of conformation of the packaging materials that can be used. These limitations can be due, for example, to both the constraint defined by the sizes of the sectors of the storage and feed unit and to the configuration of the removal and transport means, and to the fact that said plants are applied with economic advantage only in continuous functioning or in the execution of large sized batches.
The execution, in known plants, of small production batches, heterogeneous, and/or with great diversity between the packaging materials needed, is at least disadvantageous, if not actually impossible, both for reasons concerning the times needed to prepare and modify the operating conditions, and also for reasons of design constancy.
There is therefore a need to perfect a plant and a corresponding method to make packages, which can overcome at least one of the disadvantages of the state of the art.
In particular, one purpose of the present invention is to obtain a plant to make packages which is flexible and can be used for the production of a wide range of products for which a great variety of sizes of packaging materials is needed, and which at the same time allows to carry out in an economically advantageous way production batches of both large sizes and small entity and heterogeneous.
The Applicant has devised, tested and embodied the present invention to overcome the shortcomings of the state of the art and to obtain these and other purposes and advantages.